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The Arab Spring went to Bahrain and we said "gently caress you", too, so the response to Syria isn't unheard of. The Arab Spring was flawed. Popular action is not capable of ousting governments there, only prolonged insurgency holds out any hope.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:17
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swizz posted:Reports on Twitter of two or three armored suicide trucks, many fatalities Here's a breakdown courtesy of the ISW: http://iswiraq.blogspot.com/2014/09/warning-intelligence-update-isis.html Edit: Got a weird feeling about this. Between the push on Kobane and these bolder Baghdad attacks I wonder if ISIS thinks it's about to pull something bigger, with one or more of these types of assaults a sort of feint, a la Samarra before Mosul.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:21
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Tezzor, this one is for you: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/goodies_and_baddies Panzeh posted:The Arab Spring went to Bahrain and we said "gently caress you", too, so the response to Syria isn't unheard of. The Arab Spring was flawed. Popular action is not capable of ousting governments there, only prolonged insurgency holds out any hope. The complete hypocrisy regarding Gulf monarchies in the Arab Spring is really galling. Personally I feel the Spring ended when that bombing in early summer 2012 killed a bunch of Assad's inner circle.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:26
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Volkerball posted:What were the anti-war crowd demanding when ISIS was on the march, when the wave of mass executions and refugees was ongoing, and the eventual crisis on Mt. Sinjar were created, that could've prevented war? Aid for refugees? Demands that the US push for reforms to the Iraqi government to be inclusive to Sunni's? Protesting against Russia and Iran for intervening in Syria at a scale that was keeping a genocidal regime afloat and enabling ISIS? Of course not. What was important was that the US stays out of it. Who is this bizarro, one-dimensional anti-war crowd you keep talking about? Because it sounds awfully like you've built up a paper-thin portrait of people who decided to be cautious for your own rhetorical purposes. 'What were the anti-war crowd demanding when ISIS was on the march'? They were doing exactly the same thing as every-loving-body else - looking at what Iraq, the independent country, would do. Just because you feel, with the benefit of hindsight, that something should have been done about Syria does not make you more insightful than everybody else about the situation. It's like you think that because the situation deteriorated further everyone else was wrong and you are right now and forever because reasons.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:38
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How would bombing Assad a year ago actually have prevented ISIS from going "on the march" anyway?
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Sep 19, 2014 03:47
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ColtMcAsskick posted:Who is this bizarro, one-dimensional anti-war crowd you keep talking about? Because it sounds awfully like you've built up a paper-thin portrait of people who decided to be cautious for your own rhetorical purposes. 'What were the anti-war crowd demanding when ISIS was on the march'? They were doing exactly the same thing as every-loving-body else - looking at what Iraq, the independent country, would do. Just because you feel, with the benefit of hindsight, that something should have been done about Syria does not make you more insightful than everybody else about the situation. It's like you think that because the situation deteriorated further everyone else was wrong and you are right now and forever because reasons. It helps if you read his manifesto as him being Rambo.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:48
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It reminds me of a batman monologue.
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Sep 19, 2014 04:20
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McDowell posted:Tezzor, this one is for you: I love this. It implies that Sergio de Mello, a man who had his face bashed in during a protest 30 years before Iraq, and then spent the rest of his life working in humanitarian roles in basically every war for the next 30 years, eventually pushing as a legitimate candidate for the UN Secretary General, was a naive child who didn't realize that guns were real and they fire bullets. "No one knows for sure who was behind the bombing." Yeah, they just stumbled into it thinking the streets of Baghdad were paved with gumpdrops and lollipops, and had no idea that bad people existed. Bullshit. It was al-Qaeda, and Zarqawi said de Mello specifically was targeted for helping East Timor gain it's independence from "the caliphate." Also because Adam Curtis is the same guy who made the "Oh dearism" piece https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8moePxHpvok Which mocked a media who had been burned by truly naive hype about things like Kony 2012 and Live-Aid, and as a result, had resorted to the ridiculous position of treating global conflicts as hosed things that couldn't be helped, implying we must just shrug our shoulders and accept it. You know, positions like the article you posted that he wrote two years later with some of the same citations take. I loving hate cynics. Nothing is better or worse. If people care about it, it's bad and should be laughed at.
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Sep 19, 2014 04:34
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Adam Curtis is indeed terrible. His weird half-postmodern, half- cynicism leads him to take an oddly positive view of groups like the National Bolshevik Party, to equivocate between something being misrepresented and it being somehow "fake," and to general incoherence.
Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 04:50
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Willie Tomg posted:trigger warning: i'm going to do something very dangerous for good ol' forumid=46 and talk about aesthetics and intertextuality in regards to explaining a PR campaign that is nakedly not targeted at the prototypical D&D poster, while also mentioning bad things the US did. I'm sure its a waste of breath to point out that I'm not saying nonstate actor X is justified because State Actor Y did bad stuff, but this is also a thread where a dude straight up said we should invade Turkey for Reasons and hasn't been drummed out yet so I'm not sure how serious y'all are being. I thought it was well-written! I'm surprised more people didn't comment!
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Sep 19, 2014 05:23
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Anyone know where the claims that the Foley beheading is fake are coming from?
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Sep 19, 2014 05:28
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Yeah that was good willie tomg. ISIS has hacked us with their production values.Spoke Lee posted:Anyone know where the claims that the Foley beheading is fake are coming from? From the people who say everything is fake.
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Sep 19, 2014 05:45
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Al Jazeera had some bullshit article alleging it was fake last week, though they finally pulled it. And then some radical Egyptian cleric that Qatar had been hosting for years until recently gave some talk today about how those videos were photoshopped, and that while had had his "disagreements" with ISIS, he was against the "Crusader" war. Qaradawi, another Islamist living in Qatar, had a similar reaction, opposing ISIS's methods, but also opposing attacking them. Really disappointed with the mainstream Islamist reaction to all this, hope they are doomed to irrelevance.
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Sep 19, 2014 05:50
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Spoke Lee posted:Anyone know where the claims that the Foley beheading is fake are coming from? Idiots
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Sep 19, 2014 05:51
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Spoke Lee posted:Anyone know where the claims that the Foley beheading is fake are coming from? A quick Google search shows these (obviously very credible) websites reporting that. http://americanfreepress.net/?p=19406 http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=103068 http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/the-james-foley-video-is-obviously-fake/ I'm sure none of those sites would report on anything false or misleading seeing as a smaple of other headlines include... "U.S. Army Preparing for Civil Unrest" "Available Evidence Shows Ukrainian Missile Battery Shot Down Malaysian Plane" "Bankers Suck Lifeblood from Argentina" "ISIS™ , the CIA, the Salvador Option, John Negroponte’s Brother and James Foley’s Fake Beheading" "9/11: The mother of all Big Lies" "7/7: Made in Israel" "Scottish independence: Almost half of ‘No’ voters have felt ‘personally threatened’ by the ‘Yes’ campaign" "Authenticity of Protocols of Zion Affirmed" I'm "loving" some of those images though.  
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Sep 19, 2014 05:53
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AUTOTUNED TOILET posted:I thought it was well-written! I'm surprised more people didn't comment! Probably because enough people know the US doesnt deliberately target journalists especially when a couple pixels on a screen are all that differentiates a journalist from an insurgent. Not to mention that journalist was tagging along with those insurgents. But I guess some people would rather see US troops get killed instead of an unidentifiable journalist running with a group of insurgents.
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Sep 19, 2014 06:00
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Charliegrs posted:Probably because enough people know the US doesnt deliberately target journalists especially when a couple pixels on a screen are all that differentiates a journalist from an insurgent. Not to mention that journalist was tagging along with those insurgents. But I guess some people would rather see US troops get killed instead of an unidentifiable journalist running with a group of insurgents.
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Sep 19, 2014 06:11
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Spoke Lee posted:Anyone know where the claims that the Foley beheading is fake are coming from? Their asses.
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Sep 19, 2014 06:16
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Kurds recovered this on a dead ISIS leader during the fighting in Kobane. Tunisian national, with a stamp signifying he came through Turkey.  Kurds have been bitching for years about Turkey's leaky border, largely implying that Turkey is allowing ISIS into Kurdish territory, so this isn't gonna de-escalate tensions at all. Not that this is an uncommon occurrence according to them.
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Sep 19, 2014 07:00
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Does the purpose of entry at least say "jihad"?
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Sep 19, 2014 07:11
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mobby_6kl posted:Does the purpose of entry at least say "jihad"? Not much of a true believer if he was planning on a return trip.
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Sep 19, 2014 07:56
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I don't know that Rwanda or Syria are directly comparable either, especially since in Rwanda there was already a peacekeeping mission there that was desperate to keep the situation under control where such a force isn't remotely possible in Syria. If it was there and was trying to keep the fighting under control, it would be an entire different ballgame but the alternative at this point in Syria isn't a UN peacekeeping mission but formal invasion and occupation by the US, something that anti-war/non-interventionist supports are against. Also, I don't buy anti-war/non-interventionist supporters are against humanitarian aid or contribute less to it than the population as a whole.
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Sep 19, 2014 08:04
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Willie Tomg posted:trigger warning: i'm going to do something very dangerous for good ol' forumid=46 and talk about aesthetics and intertextuality in regards to explaining a PR campaign that is nakedly not targeted at the prototypical D&D poster, while also mentioning bad things the US did. I'm sure its a waste of breath to point out that I'm not saying nonstate actor X is justified because State Actor Y did bad stuff, but this is also a thread where a dude straight up said we should invade Turkey for Reasons and hasn't been drummed out yet so I'm not sure how serious y'all are being. I actually pretty much agree with all you just said. I just think that regardless of their intention, the Western world will figure out a way for it to backfire on them. If there's one thing we're better at than them, it's PR, their own recently developed skills notwithstanding.
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Sep 19, 2014 08:13
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4th Asclepiadean posted:You seem to know quite a bit with regards to PR and the way ISIS is using it, Willie Tomg. Are there any other major historical precedents for this? Obviously this is the first one to really utilize the internet to this degree, but I'm always curious about propaganda techniques (though this may not really be the same as "propaganda"). Used to do commercial video in NY and LA and did a bunch of political work, activist work, and ad work, and specialized in work where those three types of work interleave toward an end. The end was usually was getting you to buy something. I left because the money wasn't good enough for how much of a whore I felt. For past precedent: The Last Tournament in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. Seriously. To actually answer your question though: Sort of, kinda. Most of the particulars of ISIS's net outreach as an ostensible state actor and belligerent were pioneered by the IDF first and appearing prominently around events like Operation Cast Lead (which is one of one million hilarious details that speckle the horror of pretty much everything between Morocco and China at the moment) but what makes ISIS so confounding isn't what it's doing but the combination of stuff its doing. By 2014, slickly produced and regularly updated Youtube channels exist, nations have spats on Twitter and other such bizzarre stuff. Now, as a natural part of this landscape, enters an omnicidal flagellant cult succeeding with such speed largely on the basis that nobody can seriously loving believe this poo poo is actually happening even though ISIS members obsessively document and post their actions for what is essentially a global public review that will be archived until the end of the internet or history, probably both. It is a more comprehensive review of action than pretty much any military has ever recieved, and they're submitting it voluntarily. Because they don't give a poo poo. Because they don't have to. Because it doesn't matter. Because they went to fight a war to establish a Caliphate, and they're not sure what you were expecting but they themselves knew full well. ISIS denotatively speaks through violent display, and leaves the rational argument alone to burble into place via the subtext. It sounds like ISIS made a serious push into Syria recently, with looted armor and everything, and as they post the results of that on Facebook and invade a curated corporate ecosystem alongside Syrian territory in a denotative call to action that will be talked about as such by most serious commentators, as they nestle their atrocities alongside your highschool classmates' cat and kid photos, they are providing a little reminder: "hey! Hey! Your morality is false and easily broken, if not by us then by those strong enough to kill us who will do this same thing! Our straightforward and determined antipathy beats muddled and baseless idealism any day and you can hide behind facebook or sensibly liberal-realist politics, neither will save you or anyone else from the slow train coming!" It's one part Jacques Lacan '68, one part Mao Zedong: Muslim Convert, and one part Heath Ledger's Joker, in a multimedia blitz designed to communicate as much of ISIS' vision as possible across as many emergent platforms as possible in a way almost identical to a 21st century startup company and its just bizarre and fascinating and terrible to watch the interactions involved. That's a pretty good tagline for the 21st century so far, really: Bizzarre. Fascinating. Terrible. Charliegrs posted:Probably because enough people know the US doesnt deliberately target journalists especially when a couple pixels on a screen are all that differentiates a journalist from an insurgent. Not to mention that journalist was tagging along with those insurgents. But I guess some people would rather see US troops get killed instead of an unidentifiable journalist running with a group of insurgents. Nobody local to the situation gives a gently caress you didn't deliberately kill a dude when you kill a dude, just cut the mealymouthing and bullshit and kill a dude, is ISIS' point. There are, actually, a few more things than two pixels on a screen that differentiate a journalist from an insurgent, which is ISIS' point. When ISIS does not want to kill a journalist they do not kill a journalist. When they do want to kill a journalist they make him recite the reasons why they want to kill him then cut his head off and put it on the internet. This clarity and efficiency is ISIS' point. A plurality of Americans, including apparently yourself, are for practical purposes pretty cool with killing a dude on the basis of "a couple pixels." He might be a camera assistant and driver with a wife and kids, he might be a filthy insurgent and thus live in a bubble with no attachments to the community that make that guys death a tragedy, or maybe the pair hired the "insurgent" milita to run security for them that day in the killingest year in Baghdad, whatever, whatever it actually was there's a lot of things that could be there with only a couple pixels to differentiate between the possibilities. Say, at best, a 50/50 shot of insurgent/journalist, but goddamn if Are Troops and Charliegrs and the American people won't make that call, for the insurgent, for Saeed Chmagh, for the whole goddamned world if it might possibly provide a feeling of safety though it never does. That is insane. That is ISIS' point. When you make posts like the one you made just there, you concretely validate Jahiliyyah ideology and make ISIS' points for them. As a dude ISIS would like to kill a lot, that makes me sad, because I would like to see them proven wrong wherever possible. Chadderbox posted:I actually pretty much agree with all you just said. I just think that regardless of their intention, the Western world will figure out a way for it to backfire on them. If there's one thing we're better at than them, it's PR, their own recently developed skills notwithstanding. I don't think ISIS can win militarily, or "win" in a pure PR contest or "win" anything other than the martyrdom they crave by one route or another. The PR race between the guy who says he's going to kill you because you're abominable, and the guy who says literally anything else is going to be short and silly. The issue is allowing shock value to rule with the ISIS releases, and allowing it to obscure what they're actually communicating with the A/V work beyond "we killed some people and desecrated the bodies" because they don't have to go to the lengths they have if recounting war crimes is the only goal. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 09:55
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poo poo is hitting the fan in Kobane. People think multiple cities are about to fall. Rumors of Turkish collusion with ISIS, but I'm not sure about how much substance there is to that. ISIS came at the Kurds hard almost immediately after Mosul fell, bringing all kinds of US weaponry they captured. Something evidently changed recently. Here's a video of Kurdish civilians fleeing northern Syria being prevented from entering Turkey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-lIo20H1ug Estimates of 3,000+ refugees sitting by the fence. And an article about a Turkish nurse who told Parliament she was tired of treating people she knew were ISIS fighters. http://www.todayszaman.com/_nurse-says-shes-tired-of-treating-isil-terrorists_358992.html And this picture is supposedly from Istanbul, illustrating how little ISIS fighters worry about their affiliation when in Turkey. 
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Sep 19, 2014 10:05
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Tomg, I see ISIS as operating under tribalx rather than statal, dynamics. States have to be concerned and consider the reaction of the international community; they have trade networks and businesses to maintain. They know that even when there's a misunderstanding of a precise interpretation of a contract, they can just call each other up and fix it: because they will continue to exist beyond the immediate contract period and have a reputation to maintain in order to do repeat business. Not ISIS. They don't operate under the assumption that they will have to do repeat business with you, so best to modify the terms of the agreement rather than throw away the whole agreement. They are opportunists in this matter. Their tactics are not new, their strategy is not unique, their organizational hierarchy is not untested. They are a synthesis of classic fundamentalist tribalism with new media technology and can only be destroyed by state power operating in the region. I have no illusion as to what this call for destruction will entail and I am not proud of the fact that I am making it. However, I sleep better at night knowing ISIS will be eradicated. Don't you? For truly, what is the alternative? I will not say this so bluntly elsewhere, for I am a diplomatic individual and will deal with civil manners in civil society. However, ISIS is neither civil nor society. They are a zealot's revolt down to topple the old system, and replace it with an unacceptable power structure that cannot survive time. The only solution to ISIS will be through strong, well-armed, willing, and capable states undertaking state action against ISIS. Their followers are a lost generation; the only soluion is to accept the end logical conclusion of what it means when leaders say ISIS will be degraded and destroyed: attritional containment. E: Volkerball posted:poo poo is hitting the fan in Kobane. People think multiple cities are about to fall. Rumors of Turkish collusion with ISIS, but I'm not sure about how much substance there is to that. ISIS came at the Kurds hard almost immediately after Mosul fell, bringing all kinds of US weaponry they captured. Something evidently changed recently. Here's a video of Kurdish civilians fleeing northern Syria being prevented from entering Turkey. I've been saying it for awhile: Erdogan has gone rogue, it is time for a US-Persian reapproachment and use of any means necessary to force Turkey to enforce Western standards of security. E2: If the Turks will not guard their border, the option to institute American-aligned management becomes more appealing by the day. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 10:20
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My Imaginary GF posted:I've been saying it for awhile: Erdogan has gone rogue, it is time for a US-Persian reapproachment and use of any means necessary to force Turkey to enforce Western standards of security. You're insane
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Sep 19, 2014 10:26
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Willie Tomg posted:Now, as a natural part of this landscape, enters an omnicidal flagellant cult succeeding with such speed largely on the basis that nobody can seriously loving believe this poo poo is actually happening even though ISIS members obsessively document and post their actions for what is essentially a global public review that will be archived until the end of the internet or history, probably both. It is a more comprehensive review of action than pretty much any military has ever recieved, and they're submitting it voluntarily. Because they don't give a poo poo. Because they don't have to. Because it doesn't matter. Because they went to fight a war to establish a Caliphate, and they're not sure what you were expecting but they themselves knew full well. I mostly agree with you, but I don't think you should phrase it as "ISIS 'doesn't give a poo poo'" and 'obsessively documents everything'". As I posted upthread, if it were so, if they genuinely, nihilistically didn't give a poo poo and documented everything, then where are the rape videos? Instead, how about "ISIS obsessively documents everything that's within the boundaries of an action film/a game/mainstream entertainment"? This does lose a bit on the rhetoric, but your main point stands. And it makes it even funnier that in 'not giving a poo poo', ISIS does actually firmly conform to American puritanical sex-violence standards.
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Sep 19, 2014 10:29
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SedanChair posted:You're insane I am against harboring terrorists as a policy to achieve foreign policy goals. Either Erdogan has made himself willfully ignorant of the situation upon his border, in which case he is working against the interests of peace in the region, or he is ignorant from incompetence and should not govern a sovreign nation, or he is neither willfully ignorant nor incompetant snd has decided to allow terrorists a base in Turkey to advance Turkish foreign policy goals. E: The obvious answer re:ISIS documentation is that they document that which advances their agenda and use its dissemination through social media as a means to increase foreign manpower and donative contributions. They are very selective in that which they document; it is propaganda, after all. My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 10:32
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ISIS dude suggesting to me that maybe the Kurds should just give up and help in the fight against kuffar. Yeah, I'm sure that would end real well. ISIS are well known for letting bygones be bygones. Video of the recent fighting in Kobane. Yeah, poo poo looks pretty dire. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=687075378044863 Volkerball fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 10:38
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So what happens to the kurds if ISIS takes Kobane. Do they just find some local scumbag and put him in charge?
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Sep 19, 2014 10:55
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Volkerball posted:I agree it's understandable, but I also think it's a completely broken approach. It really comes down to your beliefs on why these modern intervention type wars happen. If you think there's a hidden agenda, never presented to the public, that drives politicians to try and push for war, of course you're going to oppose anything they present. But to me, even if the majority of this country aren't Republicans, they are pretty conservative and hawkish as a whole. When 9/11 happens, or ISIS doing awful things that we see on the news daily happens, this bloc calls for blood immediately in a reactionary way. Conservative Republicans and Democrats represent that call, and politic the scenario of the war to gain support and push through legislation. (I know some of you would point to Bush wanting to invade Iraq prior to 9/11, but it was because he viewed Iraq as terrorist enablers, and a massive threat to the US. In a post-9/11 world, he was able to get the reactionary bloc to agree with him) Since liberals these days largely think that the politicking around these wars are evidence that they are crafted by the illumanti and sold by their puppet politicians, they base their entire foreign policy around preventing that from going through. They aren't very well represented in Congress, but the extreme left isn't in general. That doesn't change the fact that primary anti-war bloc, especially in this thread, is entirely based on opposing any war, without any context or alternatives presented. You're correct about the reactionary forces in the US, but I think it's really disingenuous to say that anyone who believes there have often been ulterior motives for US interventions is some kind of illuminati conspiracy theorist. There are of course nutcases out there who think like that, but the vast majority of anti-war activists categorically do not. (I initially wrote a bunch of stuff about US backed coups and interventions in South America and how they were sold to the public here but it was kinda rambly and it's been said way better by a ton of others so I left it out). Anyway, ancient history, you might say. Well, your assertion that the only motivations for the invasion of Iraq were reactionary and because of a belief that they were terrorist enablers seems rather simplistic. It applies fine for Afghanistan, but after all, Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. That reactionary force had not only to be used, as you suggest, but actively channeled into hostility towards Iraq. Leaving that aside, though, I would argue that there were other forces at work. For example, the (perhaps idealistic) intention to create an exemplar of US-friendly democracy in the region (with, yes, control of large oil reserves) cannot be overlooked. Only the 'democracy' part of that was ever used to sell the war to the public. We also shouldn't ignore the political connections and lobbying of MIC firms. There is a real pattern throughout modern history of Western democracies apparently inventing or over-stressing certain rationales for intervention in order to cloak or at least de-emphasise others. This is something that's been posted in D&D a hundred times before, but it seems it needs repeating. Of course governments engage in PR manoeuvring to get the public on side with their intended policies, that shouldn't surprise anyone these days. My point is that a healthy scepticism of the stated reasons for interventions is, I think, a perfectly reasonable position. In this case, it may be wrong. I do think Obama probably does want to help the victims of IS, and does see them as a serious threat, and not only in Iraq and Syria. It's certainly hard to see what non-security US interests are being served (other than those of defence contractors ofc). I just don't think that creating this strawman of a anti-war liberal conspiracist hive mind serves the discussion in any way. quote:The entire divide in these situations is based around war vs no war, and that's all that comes into play. Liberals don't support the US military getting involved in situations like Rwanda, or the initial response to the Syrian revolution by the regime, because they are against all war. And of course the conservative, hawkish bloc doesn't as well in those situations, because it's not their problem. Who cares? Liberals are against all war? That's complete loving bullshit. Now, if you actually mean far-leftists, that's true of some, but tarring us all with the same brush is reductive. Personally if you could present me with a brilliant military solution that would be guaranteed to stop a genocide with acceptably low collateral damage I'd take it like a shot. I've seen Rwanda employed as an example in a counter argument - if all these humanitarian wars are so just and noble, why do we just happen not to intervene in the truly horrific cases where, coincidentally, there's no possible geopolitical advantage for us? quote:What were the anti-war crowd demanding when ISIS was on the march, when the wave of mass executions and refugees was ongoing, and the eventual crisis on Mt. Sinjar were created, that could've prevented war? Aid for refugees? Demands that the US push for reforms to the Iraqi government to be inclusive to Sunni's? Protesting against Russia and Iran for intervening in Syria at a scale that was keeping a genocidal regime afloat and enabling ISIS? Of course not. What was important was that the US stays out of it. Really? I was against broad military intervention in Syria, I still am. I do believe in the potential of diplomatic and non-military efforts of the type you describe. I condemn Russia for supporting Syria, of course I do because gently caress it I am anti-war and their policy was enabling it. I believe that a large part of the root fault for the rise of IS can be placed at the door of the West. Not only in the invasion of Iraq and the spectacularly idiotic CPA, but in a century of interventions, diplomatic antagonism, sanctions and so on. That's why the "they hate us for our freedoms" lie is so toxic. If your anti-war leftists here can see the pattern, how do you think it strikes people in the Middle East? With that in mind, even if the US can achieve a real military defeat of IS, is that going to put an end to aggressive fundamentalist Islam in anything other than the very short term? I don't think playing terror group whack-a-mole for the foreseeable future would be a good outcome. Willie Tomg posted:trigger warning: Just wanted to say this was a good post!
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Sep 19, 2014 10:57
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Morol posted:So what happens to the kurds if ISIS takes Kobane. Do they just find some local scumbag and put him in charge? Well Turkey evidently won't let them in, and the reason they're getting beat up on right now is because ISIS is hitting them on all fronts which is unprecedented. If they can't flee North, East, or West, then the answer is they die. I'd expect the US to start pressuring Turkey if a real humanitarian crisis pops up there though, so we'll see.
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Sep 19, 2014 10:58
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My Imaginary GF posted:I've been saying it for awhile: Erdogan has gone rogue, it is time for a US-Persian reapproachment and use of any means necessary to force Turkey to enforce Western standards of security. Well, if you want to give Putin a big rear end present, that is certainly one way of going about it. The Russian dream of a open Bosporus is a pretty old one. Erodgan is absolutely indispensable to US/NATO policy in the region, and he knows it and there is no way to get rid of him. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 11:00
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Why are ISIS hitting the Kurds so hard? They have nothing to strategically gain there except a hostile population they will have to give shiny new nape piercings to and some slave concubines. Do they actually think the Kurds will join them once occupied? Maybe it was just the easiest, softest target that was close to the Iraqi border? Pissed off at the Kurds because they brought in the US and they know they can hit them in Syria for now?
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Sep 19, 2014 11:15
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Xandu posted:Al Jazeera had some bullshit article alleging it was fake last week, though they finally pulled it. And then some radical Egyptian cleric that Qatar had been hosting for years until recently gave some talk today about how those videos were photoshopped, and that while had had his "disagreements" with ISIS, he was against the "Crusader" war. Qaradawi, another Islamist living in Qatar, had a similar reaction, opposing ISIS's methods, but also opposing attacking them. I thought there was wide levels of anger and dissing towards ISIS? For example: quote:Last month, Egypt's leading Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, called on the world's media to stop using the term, instead suggesting a new term: “al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria” or QSIS. “The initiative by Dar al-Ifta came to express the institution’s rejection of many stereotypes that attach the name of Islam to bloody and violent acts committed by such groups,” Ibrahim Negm, an adviser to Egyptian grand mufti Shawqi Allam, told al-Arabiya News. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...he-group-hates/ EDIT: Also keep in mind, Muslims aren't Catholics. The view of Imams and the like appeal to a minority of dua practicing Muslims. People are more likely to listen on Friday, pray on their own, and keep their own counsel.
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Sep 19, 2014 11:16
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Consolidating the Iraq/Syria border up to Turkey.
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Sep 19, 2014 11:17
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Sergg posted:Why are ISIS hitting the Kurds so hard? They have nothing to strategically gain there except a hostile population they will have to give shiny new nape piercings to and some slave concubines. Do they actually think the Kurds will join them once occupied? Iraqi Kurdistan has been relatively secular and is not Arab in character. More importantly, it is not ISIS. ISIS is a primarily Arab integrist movement interested in taking and controlling territory, not working in tandem with a Kurdish government. Kurdistan is a natural adversary for it. So is Turkey for that matter, considered without context.
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Sep 19, 2014 11:20
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Ardennes posted:Well, if you want to give Putin a big rear end present, that is certainly one way of going about it. The Russian dream of a open Bosporus is a pretty old one. Yes, he certainly acts like it, and it seems counter to coalition interests in the region. What alternatives would you suggest to watch for?
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Sep 19, 2014 11:22
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Turkish border open. Not sure about the scale of how discriminate they're being about it.  
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Sep 19, 2014 11:22
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